Over the next few days, and, perhaps the next several weeks, Omar Mateen’s attack on the Pulse nightclub early Sunday morning in Orlando is going to have everyone running around chasing their tails. We have already begun to see it over the past 36 hours or so as the TV news reporters, anchors, and commentators immediately latched on to the Islamic State connection. We are going to see more of this. Specifically days and days worth of coverage about Mateen traveling to Saudi Arabia twice . Or about an Islamic cleric who gave a very anti-LGBTQ talk in Orlando last month (h/t: Raw Story). Or as Trump just misstated in his speech in New Hampshire that Omar Mateen was born in Afghanistan. He was actually born in New York in 1986, well before the rise of al Qaeda. Which likely means nothing in regard to Mateen’s actions as he did not live in Orlando and no evidence has yet been presented that he went to Orlando from Port St. Lucie to hear the talk. Or that Mateen went through a 2013 background screening from his employer, which provides private security to numerous US government agencies including the military, and the screening did not turn anything up. We have already begun to see the coverage that Mateen’s dad is that guy on Youtube that ran for the Afghan presidency a year after the last election, does a Dari language Facebook broadcast, but seems to be a Pashtun and Taliban sympathizer. Or that Omar Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to IS before the shooting.
All of this misses the target, which misses the point. Just from looking at what was targeted, the real focal point here was the selection of the target itself: an LGBTQ nightclub. Even if Omar Mateen was a subjective member* of IS, which is the most likely scenario for his connection to the Islamic State, no one running IS back in Raqqa, Syria cared about, let alone knew about, an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando. They are far to busy worrying about the joint Kurdish/Syria Democratic Forces operation that is attempting to dig the Islamic State out of its self declared capital. Or the similar Iraqi Defense Forces/Iraqi Militia Forces operation to retake Fallujah. So far there is not any evidence of a wider plot or extended IS involvement in planning or operations. Being shelled on a regular basis has a tendency to concentrate the mind on immediate events and survival.
What this leaves us with, especially as Omar Mateen is dead, is his choice of targets. From the standpoint of picking an easy target to conduct a mass shooting, the Pulse nightclub was an easy objective. Only one armed security guard and lots of people inside the dark and loud venue, which made it a target rich environment and one where a high kill and casualty rate could be achieved. But beyond the tactical considerations in this target selection it is important to keep an eye on what the Pulse nightclub is: a gathering place for Orlando area LGBTQs. While it is possible that the investigation will turn up that Mateen’s choice was made for tactical reasons only, I think that we will find out that the Pulse was targeted because of Mateen’s alleged long standing animosity towards LGBTQ people and his homophobia. If this suspicion is borne out, then Mateen’s targeting was personal. And the resulting choice of where and whom to attack was specific. There are far bigger and better targets in Orlando for an IS inspired or motivated attack.** Mateen’s choice of targeting shows that this was something else – a specific and dedicated attack on the LGBTQ community. Losing sight of this reality does a disservice to the memories of those killed in Mateen’s mass murder by mass shooting and obscures another challenge to the American civil space, specifically the inclusion and acceptance of LGBTQ Americans within that civil space.
What I think the ongoing investigation is going to find is that this was personal for Mateen. His choice of target and his actions had more to do with his homophobia and hatred of homosexuals than it did with any subjective identification or affiliation with the Islamic State. A lot of animosity and fear and angst and stress has been ginned up over the past month or so against the LGBTQ community, specifically the transgendered members over the invented concerns regarding sexual predation in restrooms. When you combine that sturm und drang with the craziness that has become the 2016 presidential election, as well as the attendant National legislative, state, and local elections with the fact that we are now in LGBTQ Pride Month, no one should be surprised that a LGBTQ nightclub was attacked. Or that another attack, by a white guy from Indiana, appears to have been thwarted against an LGBTQ event in Santa Monica. As is the case with many of the challenges facing the US and other states and societies, Mateen’s attack early Sunday morning was an attack on the American Grey Zone, the civil space in which all Americans live. Losing sight of who was targeted – LGBTQ Americans – and why does a disservice to the memories of those killed in Sunday morning’s attack. The most important thing we can do, as Americans, is push back against the political and media fueled madness that is America’s 21st Century 24/7 news media culture’s collective freakout over the non-existential threat posed by the Islamic State to America diverts attention from how to properly fight the Islamic State, as well as from how to shore up and protect the frayed American civil space.
* Subjective membership refers to one identifying with and adopting the ideas, doctrines, and beliefs of a group or organization or culture or sub-culture without formally joining.
** In October 2004 I was the keynote speaker/briefer/primary instructor for the Loss Prevention Research Council’s Special Conference on Counter-terrorism and Corporate Security at Disney University. I am a Mickey Mouse professor…
Elizabelle
Missing the point seems to BE the point here.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: hence the point of the post.
japa21
@Elizabelle: Yes, there is a definite intentionality in missing the point. There is no doubt that Omar did state allegiance to ISIS and, from what I understand, ISIS is taking credit for the shooting. Of course, it took them several hours to make that claim, which tends to diminish the actuality of their being involved.
As is often the case with hate crimes, the person who commits the crime will find a religious justification, although their religion really is only one of many reasons for the crime. Yes, Islam has many strict attitudes about gay behavior and Omar was following through on those. But I find it next to impossible to believe that ISIS had anything to do with this.
LAO
The best tweet I saw yesterday, and I wish I could find it again — expressed sympathy for Republicans for having to make the difficult decision of supporting either gays and Muslims. Of course, as they are erasing the “gays” so, I guess it was choice for them.
The Other Bob
Of course the right wing has to miss the fact the target was LGBTQ. There are too many similarities between ISIS and Republicans to ignore.
They are both religious wackos, they both hate LGBTQ people and the Republicans made sure an ISIS sympathizer had access to his weapon.
Cacti
@The Other Bob:
I’ve been saying this from the start.
The GOP has no moral authority to condemn Orlando.
Gay hate and making guns easily available to all are both bread and butter policy issues for them.
Mnemosyne
Yes. All of this. If he wanted to strike back against “America,” I can think of at least one very high-value and crowded target in ORLANDO that would serve that purpose better. But instead he picked the group that includes the target of obsessive right-wing focus for the past 6 months.
As I’ve been saying, I think what we’re seeing now is hashtag terrorism: assholes who add the #ISIS to whatever horrible thing they wanted to do for other reasons. San Bernardino was a standard workplace shooting, except that they added that hashtag to themselves. Same here — he wanted to kill LGBTQ people, and he added #ISIS to make himself feel like a badass.
jl
Thanks for a very thoughtful and useful post.
As I said in previous thread, I listened to the federal officials’ presser on the shooters history and investigation. From what I heard, the shooter didn’t know much about radical jihadist groups, and ID’d himself as a ‘subjective member’ of several who are mutual and mortal enemies. If some group caught his attention of sympathy for a moment, he would ‘subjectively’ join up. Sounded like he didn’t know any more about the various radical jihadist groups than Trump does.
I also heard an interview with people who knew him who said he used to talk about mass murdering blacks. Another ex-associate said the guy had serious random rage attack problems. Also apparently very abusive of his first wife, who said it was so bad that her family had to ‘rescue her’. He had general hate problems with a lot of different types of people, seems like.
I don’t think we know enough yet, and I think very premature to assign consistent motives to the shooter. He may turn out to have much more in common with the mentally disturbed school, college and movie theatre shooters than other types of more politically motivated mass murderers and terrorists.
Miss Bianca
And yet, we have a Very Concerned Citizen right here on one of our other threads urging us to be extra-specially vigilant about making sure we hate on radical Islamic homophobia enough! You mean…that might be a misguided sentiment in the Orlando case?
Ugh, heart too heavy for proper snark. But thanks as always for helping us keep things in proper perspective.
@Mnemosyne: “hashtag terrorism” – heh, good one.
rikyrah
He lived 118 miles from the club.
118 miles.
118 miles.
He couldn’t find one club in between his home and this one?
Come on, now.
These people were targeted because of their sexual orientation.
period.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
and, if the dude from Indiana had succeeded in Los Angeles, they wouldn’t have said shyt.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: I think this makes all kinds of sense and is immediately useful — you should spread it far and wide.
jl
@rikyrah: That is true. But if the guy had gone off at another time, from what I heard feds and ex-associates and ex-wife say on the news, the target could have been a group of blacks or women. His father said he was recently enraged by gay men showing public affection. But at various times he apparently has been enraged by different groups of people.
? Martin
Exactly. The talk of an ISIS connection is just deflecting from acknowledging the domestic problem as you note. It’s completely irrelevant.
FlipYrWhig
@jl: I think Mnem has it right: the guy is “subjectively” declaring himself a scary Muslim badass without thinking that much about all the other trappings or ideologies that go along with the label. I like the “hashtag” comparison but another germane comparison could be the Confederate or Gadsden flags, which among similar losers similarly signify “Don’t fuck with me.”
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: I think I wrote that. Was it not clear?
Rob in CT
“hashtag terrorism” is bang-up work.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
As Mnem pointed out, he also chose this club in a city that is home to major tourist attractions Disney World and Sea World.
How much more obvious does it have to be?
He targeted a popular gay nightclub because it was a popular gay nightclub.
Elliott
Maybe he was sexually abused as a youth, maybe he was conflicted about his own sexuality; but YES, this was a personal attack. He may try to color it or cover it up with ISIS/ISIL. But religion was beside the post. Same as in the San Bernardino attack — Personal Grudge Massacre.
Can we please get assault weapons out of the marketplace for all of our sakes?
LAO
I think it is interesting that this “LBGT washing” of the nightclub shooting is not limited to the United States. https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosebuchanan/owen-jones-walks-out-of-sky-news-after-presenters-deflect-na?utm_term=.dcPD8EJGvW#.br367q0Vxr
daves09
Amazing but not surprising. Acknowledging his rage against gays-among others-would lead to the Christian extremist fundies role in hate crimes.
Other than possibly spurring literacy after the reformation, has any good thing ever come out of religion?
LAO
@jl:
He targeted a particular and specific population — the LGBT community — and violated their safe space. He may not have been motivated by Islamic fundamentalism but he is most certainly a terrorist.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Sky is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I am no longer surprised.
Cacti
@LAO:
Agreed.
No need to soft pedal the terror aspect. It was a terror attack. It was also a hate crime. The Ku Klux Klan was both a hate group and a terror organization. They aren’t mutually exclusive concepts.
D58826
@LAO: Listened to Rick Scott last night on MSNBC. He was so very supportive of the victims and their families and bragged about how inclusive Fla. is. Never once said the word gay or LGBT.
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: Some hate crimes are terrorism, not all terrorism is a hate crime.
D58826
@LAO: ‘Radical Islam’ might just be the hot peppers in an otherwise rancid stew of personal hate.
jl
@LAO: I characterized him as a terrorist. I don’t deny that he consciously and intentionally targeted the LGBT community because of specific hatred of them, and that hatred has been documented in interviews.
The main point I was making is that his hatreds may not have been very stable over time. So, was the a shifting constellation of hatreds and rationales for those hatreds that was produced by mental problems, or was there a relatively fixed set of hatreds and prejudice that produced the depravity? That is the question I was asking.
Adam L Silverman
@D58826: His tongue would have snapped off its roller.
Cacti
@Adam L Silverman:
No disagreement here.
An application of Occam’s Razor suggests that the Orlando incident was both.
LAO
@D58826: Acknowledging that the victims were LGBT, doesn’t fit the narrative. I mean, what’s a Republican Governor to do? Shit on them for only 363 days of the year? Take one day off from the gay-hating? Who/what do you think he is, a RINO?
LAO
@D58826: Why? Rampant homophobia and hate aren’t prevalent in American society without Radical Islam?
Adam L Silverman
@Cacti: In this case yes, with one caveat. If this was solely driven by his personal animosity towards homosexuality then there really isn’t a political aspect. And without that it really isn’t terrorism.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: That’s my read on it.
That said, @FlipYrWhig, we do talk about how the neoconfederates and Roof and all them, down to the idiots who have the confederate license plate frames, are rooted in a long history of white supremacy, and we rightly lay some of the blame for their actions on that. You can acknowledge that this guy was fucking nuts and that a lot of Muslims, including some of our allies in the Middle East, have big problems with gay people. (And you don’t have to do this to the exclusion of noting that other religions do too.)
ETA: One of my straight friends on FB just posted a link to a tweet saying “Florida Pulse gay club attacked I’m so happy someone decided to start shooting perverts instead of innocent people.” with the literal and sincere comment “‘Radical Islam’ as Trump puts it isn’t the issue. These people here are the real terrorists.”
This is the sort of thing I’m complaining about, I guess.
J
Adam, so glad to see someone put this into words. I’ve been trying to voice this since I found out yesterday, and I’m worried that the message is going to get lost. I’m ardently for better gun control in this country, but it’s not a gun control issue. Likewise for the tenuous-at-best IS connection. This was a hate crime against the LGTBQ community, and the political and cultural environment today is making it almost normal.
O. Felix Culpa
Oh you, with your facts and data and reasoned analysis. Entirely misses the point of missing the point. /
jl
@Adam L Silverman: But if functions socially as terrorism if someone shoots a group out of mental illness or personal animosity, and decides to use some loose sympathy with a political cause as a pretext. Especially when Islamic extremism is involved. This shooter apparently didn’t know the difference between al Nusra, Al Qaeda and Daesh/ISIS/ISIL. But he decides to declare himself a follower of Daesh, and that group vilely and opportunistically takes credit some time later.
What do we call that?
In interviews people said he used to rage on about how he wanted to shoot the blacks. What if he had acted on that impulse rather than his anger at two gay men showing affection in public. Then even if he had declared himself a follower of whatever Islamic group caught his fancy that day. Politically ans socially what he did would function as a terrorist attack, no matter how personal and confused his motives.
Is there a word for that?
Adam L Silverman
@jl: That’s why there’s the caveat. It doesn’t mean that its not functionally terrorism, but unlike Dylan Roof in Charleston, there’s no manifesto or statement, yet found, that indicates that this was meant as a political act.
Matt McIrvin
@Cacti: Attacking inside the actual Disney parks would probably be kind of hard–there’s a lot of security at the gates. On the other hand, the resort as a whole is a gigantic area containing dozens of hotels and attractions, and I don’t think its borders are quite as tightly controlled.
jl
I do agree with the main point of Adam’s post, though. And. if the guy did not have a long standing hatred of the LGBT community, but was a mental case and latched on to various hatreds that were wafting through the social breeze, then the role of anti-gay bigotry revved up by reactionaries would be a more important factor in explaining why this tragedy happened. I think that is a fair point, but one that would be primly denounced by the news talkers on TV and the anti-gay bigot reactionaries as vile politicization of the tragedy. But, hey, what if it just happens to be the truth?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: Yes, they would have. And you and I both know what it is.
He was…wait for it…MENTALLY ILL.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: But for Daesh, any disruption and destruction of civil space of their enemies is a poltiical act in furtherance of their religious war and goal to establish a new Caliphate. How much difference does it make whether the terrorist/crazy person write some incoherent screed on paper or yells it over a cell phone in a 911 call?
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
You were clear, but folks take this dude’s name and where his parents are from, and want to tap dance around the purposefully targeting a gay club angle. not you, not even BJ, but it’s out there.
rikyrah
@LAO:
Violated their safe space during the time where the likelihood of the club being more crowded – because it’s Pride Month .
RoonieRoo
Honestly, Balloon-Juice and thoughtful posts like yours Adam are what is keeping me sane. This is pretty much the only place I can be on the internet right now.
My oldest sister is a survivor of a mass shooting. She worked at ESL in the late 80’s. She is alive only because a coworker locked her office door and the hid under her desk. Richard Farley kicked her door and when it didn’t open, shot through it and over her desk.
Every single time one of these happens, I remember coming home from work, turning on the news and seeing my sister’s office building and just feeling the world peel away.
I survived my schizophrenic husband buying a gun and killing himself shortly after changing his mind about killing me and others in his office (he had a list).
I’m so freaking done with all of this. I’m so unbelievably sick of the NRA and the Republicans. I’m completely losing my ability to be civil to others on this topic.
elm
Thanks Adam. This is a good collection of resources.
It saddens and disgusts me to see LGBT-hating politicians and press and religious leaders take this obvious attack on the LGBT community and try to parley it into an excuse to kill, deport, and exclude more Muslims.
You don’t have to look inside a mosque to find anti-LGBT propaganda in Florida (or anywhere else rural in the U.S.). It’s easy to find in countless Christian churches, on tv, in the editorial pages, and in speeches from your local right-wing Senator, Congressthing, Governor, etc…
Major Major Major Major
@RoonieRoo: second on B-J keeping me sane. This seems to be the only place on the internet where people’s IQ doesn’t fall to room temperature at the drop of a hat, regardless of what said hat may be.
Miss Bianca
@RoonieRoo: OMG. I can’t imagine that level of crazy gun-related awful. It’s bad enough for me that one of my friends shot himself, pretty much right in front of his wife and child, in a fit of depression rage, and I’m still arguing with him in my head about why the fuck he thought he needed guns around the house.
Yes, this place is a little bastion of reality base on the ‘Net. Even our trolls are usually above average!
ksmiami
@RoonieRoo: I do not pity the victims in Orlando. Pity is weak and ultimately meaningless. I want follow up action that makes our society civil and worth defending again. We should all be demanding sane gun restrictions, extended protections for targeted minorities and actuarial accountability. The GOP and its vile Fox News infrastructure is a monstrosity stage 4 cancer and Trump is its tumorous manifestation.
PaulWartenberg2016
Some of the media pundits are already trying to avoid discussing the LGBT elements of the gunman’s focus of rage. They’d rather focus on his loose affiliation with radical Islam because that fits their narrative so much better.
Trollhattan
@RoonieRoo:
Dear Lord, that’s too much gun tragedy for ten lives, much less one. These incidents aren’t always “somebody else” are they?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@RoonieRoo: I
You have every reason to be unequivocally sick of the NRA and the Republicans. Likewise you have no reason to feel required to be civil to others on this topic.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: The “Hashtag Terrorism” observation is brilliant. Looks like this guy was a walking collection of pathologies, and ISIS gave him a hook to hang his atrocity on.
That said, @Major Major Major Major makes a great point too: The poisonous hatred for gays that exists in fundamentalist versions of Islam shouldn’t go unremarked — nor should its corollary in Christianity and other faith traditions. It should be condemned and rooted out. I don’t think this idea is incompatible with the #ISIS concept at all.
@RoonieRoo: I’m sorry you experienced such a horror. And I understand what you mean about civility going out the window. I’ve got zero patience with anyone who mouths NRA talking points these days. Those bastards have too much innocent blood on their hands.
Elie
@RoonieRoo:
My deepest sympathy to you! You have been through it and the trauma must still be considerable. Hopefully you and your sister have received some counseling. Sounds like a knee jerk recommendation, but honestly, it helps get the poison to the surface where you can deal with it. Otherwise it just lurks underneath poisoning things… It is good to be able to name and describe what happened…
Blessings and peace to you and your sister.
Peale
@PaulWartenberg2016: Yeah. We need boots on the ground pronto to end this ISIS threat right away! That’s what I’ve heard. Where those boots should be, though, is a good question.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
You and Adam are welcome to co-opt the hashtag terrorism line if you like, though credit the first time you use it would be nice. ?
This guy seems somewhat akin to the Tsarnaevs, too, in that his ball of theoretically religiously-based rage and hatred got directed at a very American target.
People claim to have all kinds of lofty motives for committing horrible crimes, but I don’t necessarily think we should give credence to those stated motives. To me, this was a religiously-based hate crime, but the fact that the religion it was based in was Islam does not IMO magically transform it into terrorism. It was, frankly, too American for that.
nutella
@Major Major Major Major:
I assume this loser is now a former friend?
gorram
I think one of the things that many cisgender and straight commentaries on this miss is the history this feels like an echo of. Stonewall is fairly well known, but it was the culmination of LGBT people making it clear that we would riot when the police invaded sanctuaries, not just bars and clubs but even just restaurants like Cooper’s Donuts in LA and Compton’s Cafeteria in SF. There’s a dark side to that history too, of when we didn’t win, and that’s what this reminds a lot of LGBT people of – particularly in my mind of the Upstairs Lounge, which an arsonist sealed off before burning down.
At least in my experience, that’s helped inform a pretty broad split within the LGBT community in terms of how this attack is being understood. There are (mostly cisgender and White) LGBT people who by and large haven’t had to depend on these sorts of communal spaces and consequently haven’t learned this history. It’s almost as much of a shock for them as it is for cisgender and straight people to realize that no, there are people who want to kill us in scores, if not more. There’s a lot of messages out there nowadays about bigotry against us being petty (“I won’t bake you a wedding cake!”), or unusual (the Matthew Shepherd-style of hate crime). Some of the people dealing with that surprise are realizing that these weren’t distant attacks, and that the violence against us is real. And others, well, they’re adding “culturally other” to their list of when to expect it.
I’m a bit relieved that they seem to be pretty starkly in the minority (ha) among us, though. Maybe I’m in a weird alternative bubble, but most of the fellow LGBT people I’ve seen in shock have had part of that shock be about the US as a society where this still happens. Where someone, born in NYC, and who owned multiple NYPD shirts did this. There’s a way in which LGBT people who don’t have to contend with racism or other big -isms might have just had a rather rude awakening.
laura
The call to 911 and conflating his actions against the LGBTQ community sure makes it easy to ignore the issue of homophobia by the press, the governor, the punditocracy and the god-botherers. I wonder if it was to misdirect or redirect away from Mateen’s sexuality or gender issues. He spent a lot of time railing against gays, women and hispanics,enough for others to make career changes when his employer chose to ignore or look the other way in response to complaints about his conduct and comments.
Mnemosyne
@gorram:
To this white, cisgender straight woman, this seems really akin to the Bible study murders in South Carolina, which was a similar situation of people being murdered in their own, “safe” territory (in that case, inside their church).
I think that also ties in with what Adam is saying about eliminating the “grey zone” — this kind of hate crime aims to make gay people feel unsafe in the public spaces they created for themselves.
Major Major Major Major
@nutella: he wasn’t posting it approvingly. His comment on it was “‘Radical Islam’ as Trump puts it isn’t the issue. These people here are the real terrorists.”
That’s what I was noting.
gorram
True, Mnemosyne, especially in that they were both safe zones that many people in our society fail to recognize as such. In both cases, there’s a (deliberate IMO) misreading of the situation. Remember how that was presented as an attack on -explicitly White as well – Christian spaces by Fox News? Now this attack is being reimagined as a very different type of terrorism, that’s inclusive of straight and cisgender people being victimized.
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: Not disputing the premeditation involved, but going 100+ miles for a pint or cocktail isn’t unheard-of in FL. LGBT watering holes aren’t especially common, and tend to be in major cities. ORL may look like a hike from Port St. Lucie, but it’s easier to get to than WPB or FtL, which though closer have nasty traffic to get through.
Now, the dingbat who drove from INDIANA to CALIFORNIA to get his H8 on, THAT’s definite premeditation…
boatboy_srq
@gorram: INDEED.
People forget that LGBT spaces have been targets for a long time, and remain so for a number of groups. “The bar had armed security…” Well, sure it did: between the wingnuts who are prone to lob bricks at establishment and patrons, wingnutty kids beating people up outside for fun (Katherine Knot – remember her?), and local PDs out to close the bars down for drug offenses or selling alcohol to minors, armed security for the bars is the rule rather than the exception.
And there are so many “praise Jeebus for dead f#ggots” statements from NOM, FRC, Westboro and the rest that I’ve lost count.
The two things that are different this time are the body count and the ethnicity of the shooter. Those two things do NOT give the Reichwing the right to own this incident.
Mnemosyne
@gorram:
Yep, I think we’re in noisy agreement. The right wing is trying to use this to stir up fear of “terrorists” or “ISIS,” but the only way they can do they is by erasing who the victims were and why the killer chose them as his murder victims. They have to try and pretend it was “terrorism” as they define it and not a hate crime, which it clearly was.
Dmbeaster
Watching Chris Hayes on MSNBC tonight, a lot about how Mateen was a badly conflicted homosexual. He had visited the club before, and was recognized by patrons as a prior guest. Also on gay dating websites. The whole ISIS thing was baloney by him to cover his motive. Also, he came to the attention of the FBI because after co-workers taunted him about being a muslim, he dumped some terrorist rhetoric on them. They then finked to the FBI. I suspect these emotional reasons are responsible for him cloaking himself in contradictory allegiances with various radical Islamic organizations that are themselves in conflict. Kind of a metaphor for this guy.
gorram
I’m kind of frustrated about how many commentators, and I suspect Chris Hayes fits this bill too sadly*, have taken those initial reports.
Straight and cisgender people regularly infiltrate LGBT spaces – including clubs and dating sites – often expressly with the purpose of finding, isolating, and often killing us.
His presence there *before* he engaged in violence really doesn’t demonstrate much of anything.
The straight and cisgender self assurance that he can’t have been one of you is honestly also a part of the history of anti-LGBT violence in this country. Well into the 1980s, most incidents of bashing of couples were investigated first and foremost by police as violence one member of the couple had done to another. The Upstairs Lounge arson, which I mentioned upthread, was never properly investigated because the police decided it was probably a disgruntled former customer/employee who had done it, and not worth looking into.
The straight and cisgender conviction that we aren’t oppressed by them, but rather oppress ourselves, is kind of on full display here. And I’m tired of it being a passable, acceptable form of bigotry and ignorance that liberals excuse among their ranks.
*I haven’t watched it yet. I am personally dreading watching it. Because there have been times when I, a White person, will be watching Hayes and think that what he’s said and how he’s said it is demonstrative of White privilege. This time I will know that he has straight and cisgender privileges I do not have. That he has never been in a physical or online space that is dating oriented and had to wonder if it was all a ruse to get people alone and vulnerable. Because we still have to consider that, yes, even in the US. Even in “the Blue states”.